London-based artist Konrad Wyrebek is exhibiting new AV work in the group show Video/Painting at Solyanka State Gallery in Moscow.

Konrad Wyrebek is showing two large screen video pieces from his DataError series, alongside 14 other critically acclaimed Russian and international artists including AES+F, Erik Bulatov and Olga Chernyshova.

With Solyanka Museum fast becoming one of the city’s most exciting art institutions,Video/Painting explores the relationship and tension between the two forms, and the potential for painting to come to life through video.Konrad Wyrebek also works with sculpture, 3D scanning, painting and digital print. Investigating contemporary concerns – such as the effects of consumer culture, technology and obsession with physical perfection – his process often begins with images and material sourced online. These sources are then re-appropriated, distorted or re-made in different mediums, with much of Konrad/Wyrebek’s output attempting to find fault-lines where idealised images and messages begin to breakdown and become new possibilities.Solyanka Museum, 109028, Moscow, Salsola Street 1.2, p. 2 (entrance from the street. Zabelina)

Data Error are a series of large format abstract paintings and video-paintings using images captured from television, film, and print that represent contemporary living, lifestyle and culture.

Each image is pixelated through a succession of digital compressions with deliberate settings causing corruption of data in transfer between different softwares and devices. Wyrebek explains that there is a connection between the process and the intensification of abstraction Mondrian's paintings.

During the process, images are destroyed, protected and subsequently retrieved “It is related to my interest in imperfection and deformation”

“I know what I am interested in and I am trying to make that happen. When you are watching a video online, you can see that sometimes pixelation happens for a second, but I am trying to set the condition to make it happen a bit longer”

Wyrebek’s large-format abstract paintings examine the relationship of mark-makings between the emotional artist's hand and rational technology. The question is also raised as to how far and how soon, humanity is losing itself in the digital; how far we are already embarked on a journey that merges mind and body with the stuff of machine.

Like Wyrebek's previous half flash, half steel ‘live sculpture’, contrasting elements are brought into play in Data Error Paintings Apart from showing merely elements of abstraction, Wyrebek's paintings also retain the possibility of interference. They are not simply the product of corrupting process of data, each painting is unique and singular, and each finishing layer is retouched.

The nature of abstract art is always a subject of investigation in Wyrebek's work. “Can photography be abstract?” he asks. In his previous work, Plato's Cave, he photographed abstract light in different environments. The photographs look abstract, but they are, nevertheless, a faithful representation of reality. “It is a presentation of something that looks abstract, but it was an object, a video, a picture”

“I like the randomness. When the mistakes come out, for me, they look beautiful. By enforcing this mistake, they have the potential to become deeper stories than they are. The mistakes and pixelation eventually end up looking interesting and have the intellectual potential to open the gate to see and understand something different.”

There is a certain irony in Wyrebek's abstract paintings, when the details are gone, we are but forced to step back to see a clearer and bigger picture. As the viewers step back, the boarders of the pixels become invisible, the process of pixelation is being reversed and the seemingly calm, regular and geometrical pixels become chaotic and dynamic. By reducing the superficial meaning, and by abstracting the figurative, artists like Wyrebek’s knowingly compel viewers to search for meaning in the art work, to see rather than simply looking.

On a daily base we are exposed to vast amounts of information that can be interrupted, transformed or even corrupted. Konrad Wyrebek's DataError paintings open discussion and further investigation the chaotic and complex DNA of the digital age.

About Me

Konrad Wyrebek is
young, London based artist working across various mediums - primarily in painting and photography. Also produce 3D installation, performance based works.
If you're interested in the projects or want to find out more about any of my work please get in touch.
www.konradwyrebek.com